EXETER, N.H. (AP) – The 41-foot sailboat carrying a man who was swept overboard last weekend had no life jackets on board, which may have been stolen, the man’s co-worker said Friday.

The boat usually was stocked with foul-weather gear, including the life jackets, said Thomas Gage, Stephen Woods’ law partner. Woods was an experienced sailor, and his wife, who was very cautious, insisted on the gear, Gage said.

But the items were missing when Woods, 55, and his son, Asher, 20, who were bringing the boat back to New Hampshire from Rockland, Maine, ran into rough waters last Saturday.

“We think that they were pilfered,” Gage said.

Asher Woods later told authorities that his father fell overboard about 13 miles off Boothbay Harbor on Saturday night.

A Coast Guard jet found the drifting boat off Cape Cod on Thursday, about 130 miles east of Provincetown, Mass. Asher Woods, who was on the boat told authorities that his father fell overboard about 13 miles off Boothbay Harbor on Saturday night.

The Coast Guard called off the search for Stephen Woods, saying there was no need to investigate.

Unlike his father, Asher Woods wasn’t an experienced boater and was unable to make the communications equipment on board the sailboat work, Gage said. “The batteries went low,” Gage told reporters at the law office in Exeter. “He simply wasn’t able to make effective use of it.”

Asher is “obviously shaken,” Gage said. “He’s with his family. He’s in – I think I can say – good physical shape. But this is an unimaginable circumstance for any of us, and for a young man of 20 years old, I’d have to say he’s incredibly brave.”

The family was planning Stephen Woods’ funeral. A woman who answered the door at their home in Stratham said they didn’t want to be interviewed.

The law office featured models of sailboats in a glass case, gifts from Woods’ wife, Deborah.

“As a trial attorney, he had a hard shell,” Gage said. “Everybody who knew him knew that inside he was a warm and sensitive person.”

Gage added, “The key to understanding Stephen was that he didn’t take himself all that seriously, but if he was your attorney, then you had someone who really cared about your problem and wanted to help.”

The boat was kept in Rockland during the warm weather and was being moved to Rye Harbor for the winter.

The National Weather Service in Gray, Maine, said marine weather data for the area Saturday showed seas between 4 and 5 feet with winds gusting to 29 mph.

The Coast Guard said the crew of the jet that spotted the 41-foot, two-masted Niobi alerted a fishing boat, the Amy Philbrick out of Newington, N.H. Its captain, John Doran of Eliot, Maine, found the Niobi and telephoned his wife, Joyce Doran.

She recounted her husband telling her, “Asher watched his father being washed overboard,” the Portsmouth Herald reported.

Her husband told her that when the Amy Philbrick approached Asher Woods in the Niobi, he jumped from the sailing boat and started swimming to the fishing vessel.

“Asher Woods kept saying, I couldn’t get him. I couldn’t get him,”‘ she recounted.

Stephen Woods is a former Rockingham County attorney and Stratham selectman. Besides Asher, he and his wife have four other children, one of whom had a baby last week.

Deborah Woods, a former state representative from Stratham, “was staying home with her daughter and that’s why she wasn’t on the boat,” Gage said.